An Open Letter to the Tooth Fairy

This is the note left for the Tooth Fairy last night because of her dereliction of duty and her forgetfulness from the night before. Although I did have to explain to my daughter that sometimes the Tooth Fairy can be very busy and find it hard to break a twenty. I thought this was too sweet not to share. Happy Sunday. 

The 7 reasons I hate you Franklin Covey

There I said it. Someone had to. Anyway there are way more than 7 reasons. In fact, I won’t even give you the satisfaction of making a list. You call it Leadership, Keys to Success, Conflict Resolution, Emotional Intelligence, Myers-Briggs and some sort of “Color” I turned out to be.
I call it Labeling, Subjection, Compartmentalizing, Formulation, and Brain Washing. You want me to have “Skills for Good Program Management” Then leave me alone to do my job. 

You know, maybe it’s NOT the way I formulized the question; maybe my co-worker is just a dumbass.
Not everyone is always on the same page. We are all different with different goals. I am not some variable that can be plugged into a formula to get an expected outcome. Shame on you.

It’s like anything in life. Some days you’re the lion and other days you’re the zebra.

What makes a good leader? It’s simple.
It’s when others see in you a path that can get them to where they want to be.

“You want to be a leader?” Then shed the shackles of conformity and blaze a new path. I’m sure George Washington didn’t know his MBTI type.

Author’s Note: This diatribe was formulated on the way to yet another mandated Franklin Covey training session. Like leadership can be bottled up and packaged like Coca-Cola. (insert sarcasm here) A bit ironic that the future leaders are being lead into training like lemmings heading off the cliff. Now I know there are some of you who follow and believe in this method, it’s just not me, and we too have a voice and a difference of opinion.

Poem

I must say, still being new to the wordpress.com community, I am pretty impressed with all the writings that people have posted, especially the poetry. Now I’m not a big English Lit guy and have long put my books away only to revisit now and then in my children’s schoolwork. This brings me to today’s blog. Every year in the spring, my children’s Montessori School puts on a “Mother’s Day Tea” in which the children recite a poem from memory for all the moms in attendance. My daughter, not to be outdone by her brother who could memorize Hamlet if he had to, wrote her own. It was a pleasant little poem that only needed a bit of tweaking from a loving dad to have a nice transition. She wanted no part of my intrusion and quit talking to me for a couple of days. We have since made amends and here is the poem.

Blow a Kiss

Blow a kiss to the sky
Every night your dream flies by
In the morning as you wake
Another chance you will take
To make that dream come true and then
When the night comes once again
To dream a dream that you will fly
Very high above the sky 

Hannah at age 8

Clouds

“Daddy, where do clouds go?”

Where do clouds go? What the hell, why do I get all the tough questions. Why can’t mom tackle a few now and then?

“What’s that Sweet Pea? What do you mean where do they go?” “You know, some days the sky is full of clouds and some days they are all gone.” 

She’s right, where do they all go? That’s something a child would ponder. I remember being a kid and riding in back of the car on long trips along the river looking at all the plants with their smokestacks billowing  all the steam and what not high into the sky. Big puffs of marshmallow like fluffiness. I use to think that’s how clouds were made. Little cloud factories doing their job. 

I was going away for business recently and she wanted to know what the top of a cloud looked like, So I took some pictures out the plane window so she could see them. You have just shared our memory. 

My Come to Jesus Moment with my Cat

“Hello, my name is Winnie and I am a recovering asshole cat.”

Once again I was running late for work and I was in a hurry to leave the house to catch the shuttle. This morning was different, this morning my cat peed all over my bag. Not that the flee bag never peed on my bag before, because he has. It was that I needed my bag for work that day. Now the cat, seemingly proud of his accomplishment, drifted way too close to my foot and in my rage I kicked him. Well not really a kick. More like a kinetic push off. Anyway, it was enough to get his attention. He scampered away and I quickly rinsed my bag and ran out the door. It was a long ride to work and the pee smell was gaining ground. I was still angry but more so with myself. How could he do that? I rescued him one rainy night when he was a kitten. I clean his putrid box. I’ve woken up on more than one occasion only to step in something he has hacked up, and still he does this to me. Was he still mad about the neutering? God forbid you pet him when he’s not in the mood; fangs! Still, I felt bad. The kids were so attached. CAT, first word for both of them. I called home to check on him. All was fine. Winnie avoided me all the next week, but slowly, gradually, we made amends. He finally made his way to my lap for chin scratchings. We have come to an understanding. An alliance of super powers. There may be bumps in the road but we have moved past our differences and are best buds now.